Let it rip

A poem

I feel like I am drowning:

in laundry, in dishes, in requests

for paper, pasta, paint pens.

Most of the time,

I can’t get a minute,

and when I can, I’m too tired

to do anything with it.

I watch TV the way I used to drink

wine, drowning out my internal narrator

with episode after episode

of a show I won’t remember

two months from now.

In the morning

I will be bloated and tired

and miss the body I had

when I was 25,

not because of muscle tone,

but because of how quickly

it bounced back

from any physical indignity,

how little sleep it needed,

how tweaking my wrist

was inconvenient

rather than incapacitating.

Today I was so busy doing

nothing and everything

I forgot to make the bed.

It’s 5:30pm and after I finish this

I will head upstairs and make it

anyway. These days

my vision of perfection

is clean sheets and clean floors,

folding the clothes

right after taking them out

of the dryer, opening

the washer door

as soon as it stops,

so it doesn’t smell like mold

and add two more things

to my list, white vinegar

and time away

from something else.

I love parenthood,

I do, it is endless joy and wonder

and also stress and fatigue.

2003 was the year I finished my MFA,

just under 30, and still, thank god,

young enough to be considered

a prodigy, a preoccupation

that lacks in humility

what it makes up for in arrogance.

It was also the year Anchor Books published

a novel called I Don’t Know How She Does It.

Now I know: she doesn’t,

and tries daily

to forgive herself for it.